Lost September showcase stands as a testament to the second-class standing of the county game

The first Saturday of September used to be county cricket’s big day out.
Lord’s would be packed from dawn to dusk, England players and overseas stars
would bestride the stage, each county was backed by a chorus of 10,000
supporters or more, and they would rush on to the ground to cheer the
post-match presentations in front of the pavilion.

Inspired: A young Ian Bell joined Warwickshire after watching the 1993 NatWest Trophy final Photo: PA WIRE

It was fifty years ago this very week that the first county knockout cup final was staged at Lord’s. Wisden recorded that Sussex beat Worcestershire by 14 runs in front of 25,000 spectators “amid tremendous excitement” – and a ticket cost the substantial sum of seven shillings and sixpence.

For their quarter-final against Yorkshire at Hove in 1963, Sussex had attracted a capacity crowd of 15,000. Those were the days when spectators sat on the grass behind the boundary ropes, without invading the ground – or being hit by batsmen who have spent the winter pumping iron.

Into the 1970s the Gillette Cup of 60 overs per side was county cricket’s flagship. Would BBC television – just supposing it took an interest in cricket now – delay the start of the Ten O’Clock News this coming Saturday if the YB40 semi-final between Hampshire and Glamorgan runs late?

That was what happened of course in 1971 when Lancashire’s semi-final against Gloucestershire ran late. The Nine O’Clock News was delayed, the nation kept waiting, so that BBC viewers could watch the finish of a county cricket match.

Into the 1980s the first Saturday of September was still the greatest day out in the cricket calendar, exceeding most Test matches in public appeal. Special trains and coaches brought chanting supporters from the shires to Lord’s.

‘County’ still meant something. When Sussex won the first final, they were led by their dashing cosmopolitan captain Ted Dexter, born in Milan, but even so eight of their team were born in Sussex. Supporters knew their players and felt they were represented by them.

“Tremendous feeling was stirred up among the spectators as well as the cricketers,” Wisden wrote about the competition fifty years ago. “At Lord’s, supporters wore favours (badges, rosettes etc) and banners were also in evidence, the whole scene resembling an Association Football Cup final.”

Counties that had never won the championship, mainly through lack of resources, now had the chance to win their first trophy, like Sussex, Northamptonshire and Somerset.

When Viv Richards and Ian Botham took Somerset to Lord’s, supporters took several sheathes of hay to symbolise and parody their rustic origins. One of the banners read:

We be from Zummerset, It’s zider that we zup. With Vivvy, ‘Both’ and Joel We’re going to win that cup.

Into the 1990s, even when the competition was reduced to 50 overs per side and renamed, the first Saturday of September could still be the biggest day.

A capacity crowd saw Warwickshire chase down 322 to defeat Sussex off the last possible ball in the NatWest Trophy final of 1993 – “widely regarded as the best ever played” according to Wisden. It included an impressionable Ian Bell, who decided then he want to play cricket for Warwickshire.

Not any more. International matches, designed to maximise TV revenue, have saturated the calendar and drowned the county game. The Riverside and the Ageas Bowl, neither one of England’s traditional Test grounds, are both staging two separate fixtures between England and Australia within a month!

The first Saturday of September is no longer county cricket’s big day out, but the rest day between the first and second one-day internationals between England and Australia.

On Saturday 21 September there will be a 40-over county final, but Lord’s has only been half-full in recent years for these much-diluted matches. And whichever two counties are competing in the final, at least eight of their players will probably come from outside the county.